Charles Simic

Charles Simic

Stub of a Red Pencil

You were sharpened to a fine pointWith a rusty razor blade.Then the unknown hand swept the shavingsInto its moist palmAnd disappeared from view.

You lay on the desk next toThe official-looking documentWith a long list of names.It was up to us to imagine the rest:The high ceiling with its cracksAnd odd-shaped water stains;The window with its viewOf roofs covered with snow.

An inconceivable, varied worldSurrounding your severe presenceOn every side,Stub of a red pencil.

hide

Charles Simic

American poet of Serbian origin. He was born in Belgrade, where he lived till he was 16. He learned English after emigrating to the United States. He writes about jazz, art, philosophy. He is the co-editor of Paris Review. In The New York Review of Books he published articles about Polish poetry. For his collection The World Does Not End: Prose Poems Simic received the 1986 Pulitzer Prize. In 2014, he was awarded the Zbigniew Herbert International Prize for Literature.